Core Practices for Neighborhood Reinforcement and City Transformation
We have learned through years of experience that there are core principles that lead to the success of private-public partnerships in transforming neighborhoods. We emphasize the importance of private and public collaboration, typically led by private sector leadership, to ensure speed, accountability, and sustainability in achieving transformative success.
Cities prosper when their neighborhoods prosper.
Private and public leadership must collaborate to turn around a neighborhood successfully. Together, they must be facilitated to lead through the complexities of transforming each neighborhood within a city, especially to the point that most cities need to be transformed.
Our process integrates the following practices to build collaborative partnerships to implement action plans that align with the fabric of the community that a neighborhood serves.
Private-Public Leadership
The first step in neighborhood transformation is to align a leadership team committed to implementing the change they will design. This is usually a mix of private and public sector leadership members represented through an existing or newly established for-profit, non-profit, or community development corporation.
Most successful projects are led by multiple private sector leadership members working together to orchestrate a responsible investment stack and revenue stream that assures long-term success.
Where a formal sponsor leadership organization does not exist, we aid in establishing one early in the process. This group will be bound to their vision, mission, work plan, and pro forma to set direction for the scope and pace of the transformation process.Neighborhood Portfolio Ventures
Selecting a neighborhood to transform is an art and a science. All communities have specific areas with density that are distressed, blighted, and full of potential for revitalization and change.
Studying leadership, demographics, psychographics, assets, neglected investments, infrastructure, land use, amenities, and more is part of the process. Any city will have multiple potential Complete Neighborhood opportunities.
We help align the criteria and cases to target specific neighborhoods that will have the greatest community impact. Ideally, over time, a city’s capacity is built to transform multiple neighborhoods and develop a competitive quality of place portfolio. This thereby attracts new residents to each neighborhood.Neighborhood Design and Programming
Great neighborhood design comes down to distilling the character and personality of a neighborhood and translating it authentically through its continued construction of architecture, street design, housing configurations, recreation, commerce, and community programming.
The leadership organization must design a work plan that sets the template and expectations for each of the elements that are critical to the continuance and sustainability of its intrinsic DNA. Guiding local contractors, developers, investors, residents, businesses, and community organizations toward these priorities is critical to the long-term buy-in, vitality, and success of the neighborhood.
Ultimately, the neighborhood requires effective ongoing community leadership to plan and implement social integration events, programs, and activities that foster a sense of pride and encourage community members to live, work, and play together as neighbors.Diversified Funding Stack
Funding a neighborhood transformation is not possible without tapping into all potential sources of local, state, federal, public, private, and institutional funding. The collaboration of these funding sources creates strength and assurance of project success.
Achieving a more complex funding stack isn’t easy, and it must be handled strategically to align the agendas, requirements, and fund-matching opportunities. Due to COVID, there are millions of dollars available for any one project at local, state, federal, and private levels for urban, distressed, and low-income neighborhoods.
Working carefully and intentionally to match these funds with corporations that need a qualified workforce and small businesses that need dedicated employees creates an economic pull that sustains for years.Neighborhood Entrustment
Neighborhood transformation initiatives will receive minimal traction from the start if solid community engagement is not established as the leadership group is formed. Too often, community leaders conduct needs assessments, asset mapping, focus groups, and surveys without an established comprehensive planning process and a leadership group.
Thus, the fact-finding efforts achieve the opposite of what was intended, which is public frustration, because there is no follow-up process or entrusted leadership to carry the torch and address the community’s ideas and concerns.
Authentic and transparent community development requires courageous and honest leaders who are trusted by the community and who have demonstrated success in fulfilling their promises.
Expert partners must be aligned to inform and guide the planning process, supporting leaders in activating and expediting decision-making to demonstrate momentum and progress, as outlined in the work plan. Regular community communication around the work plan instills the trust leaders need to keep moving forward and prove that success is possible.Measures for Neighborhood Success
We’ve emphasized that every neighborhood has the opportunity to be unique. Thus, each neighborhood will have different metrics for measuring success. While a city should measure progress overall with its citywide dashboard, we encourage neighborhoods to post a scorecard showing the change in progress they have defined as desired and transparently report the completion of the steps committed to action.
Read more about some metrics that could be considered based on a neighborhood’s design for improvement.
